Thursday, 17 September 2009

OFA Bus Stop Rally

I attended the rally put together by Organizing for America last night – the big ol’ tour-bus pulled into Sugarhouse park a little late, but there was a surprisingly large and enthusiastic crowd there to support it. As an antidote to all of this media coverage of Tea Party Protests and the like, I thought I’d point out that this event was in Utah, reddest of red states, and yet the turnout was unbelievable (estimates say 1500, but I find that hard to swallow outright):

A pretty cool crowd. All kinds of folks showed up, from hippies to bikers to grandmas:

“What about the Tea Party People?” you might ask. Well, three pretty peaceable wingnuts turned up. They seemed kind of sad and lonely:

Patriot poodle says: “Ruh roh, we need a public option!”

Various speakers showed up, including the chair of the Utah Democratic Party, Wayne Holland, who dropped the ball by referring to health reform as an issue for “2008” (wake up, Wayne! We won! Time to focus on the now, brother!).

Good crowd, good times, good energy. OFA has hosted so many of these events across the country that it makes the Tea Parties cooked up by FreedomWorks look like gnat farts. Next time you see CSPAN broadcasting and re-broadcasting a bunch of wingnuts in Revolutionary War gear yelping about socialism, remember: a metric ton of patriotic Americans are out there organizing in favor of health reform, even if its flying under the media’s radar.